“I will die.
Morning arrived in a muted gray, the silence heavy, almost suffocating. I stood at the edge of our life together, fingers twitching with the impulse to reach out, to fix something already shattered. She had left in the night, returned without explanation. Her absence was a wound; her presence, a reminder of its depth.
Thirty years of marriage felt like a fog filling the kitchen, the space between us thick with unspoken words—contempt, resentment, finality.
“Do you disdain me?” I asked, my voice teetering between forced calm and quiet desperation.
She laughed—sharp, dismissive, a blade to the gut. “You’re crazy,” she said, as if this unraveling was a fiction of my own making.
I wanted to believe her. Needed to. So I clung to normalcy, to routine. “Okay. Have a great day. See you later,” I murmured before stepping into the world, where no one knew I was crumbling.
The day moved in a haze, the weight of impending loss pressing down with every step. Returning home, I forced warmth into my voice. “Hey, honey, I’m home.”
She didn’t turn. Just stood at the counter, her back to me, stirring something that no longer included us.
“Where are the kids?” I asked, grasping at remnants of family.
“At practice,” she answered flatly, a prelude to something worse.
When she finally faced me, her eyes were empty—love had long since vacated.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier,” she began, measured, emotionless.
“Yes?” My heart pounded, my knees weak, knowing what was coming.
“I’m going to leave you.”
The floor met me before I could find the strength to stand. “I will die,” I whispered, though we both knew I wouldn’t.
Silence swallowed us whole. My tears fell, ink sealing the end of our story.
That day, something inside me did die. And yet, I remained—for our children, for some semblance of a life I no longer recognized. Seven years have passed, each day another step through the wreckage. The wound never quite closed, only scabbed over, enough to function, enough to exist.
No redemption arc. No fairy-tale ending. Just the memory of love’s funeral.
And today, on another February 13rd, I write these words, still haunted by the Valentine’s Day massacre of my soul.
BB Grey--musings 
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